2013.05.16 渴望成为第一个登顶的人

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TECHNOLOGY
The Team That Summited Everest Dosed Two Sherpas With Amphetamines
Eager to be the first to the top, these brave adventurers briefly turned to ... Adderall.

By Megan Garber
MAY 16, 2013
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Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay (Wikimedia Commons)
Nearly sixty years ago -- on May 29, 1953 -- Edmund Hillary and his Nepalese mountaineer, Tenzing Norgay, became the first humans that we know of to have reached the summit of Mount Everest.

Their accomplishment was a feat not just of physical prowess, but of procedure. Climbing Everest, then as now, was as much a design problem as anything else: Which path could lead humans safely to the summit? Hillary and Norgay, ultimately, summited the wind-whipped, snow-covered mountain not on their own, but with the backing and the strategizing of a 400-person team named for its leader: John Hunt. The Hunt expedition to Everest included not just a small cadre of Western mountaineers, but also 362 porters and 20 Sherpa guides, one of them being Norgay -- and all of them wrestling with some 10,000 pounds of equipment, food, and other luggage.


Hunt was not without guidance in the strategy he developed for his expedition. The year before, 1952, a team of Swiss mountaineers under Edouard Wyss-Dunant had come close to summiting Everest, setting a new climbing altitude record and identifying a new route up the mountain. Hunt used information from their experience to both build on their successes and avoid the pitfalls they had encountered. He charted a new route -- which turned out to be the route -- to the top of the mountain, one that would require the climbing of the steep, icy surface known as the Lhotse Face.

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The route would require something else, too: lots of speed on the part of the humans who attempted to traverse it. The slope of the Lhotse is stepped -- meaning that it would offer climbers the opportunity to establish intermediate camps on their way to the summit, which would in turn mean easier access to supplies and shorter climbs between rests. This infrastructure would be the key to the Hunt party's success. The team set up Camp V at the bottom of the face, Camps VI and VII on the face itself, and Camp VIII above the face.


The only outstanding question was how -- and whether -- the mountaineers would be able to travel between the camps. They would need, above all, to be quick about it.

And here's where things get kind of crazy.

To get the speed they needed, The Guardian reports, the Hunt expedition briefly experimented with a time-tested, if somewhat artificial, way to hurry up and focus on the task at hand: amphetamines. Yep, the psychostimulant drugs that today are largely known by brand names like Adderall. While the team's medical officer, Michael Ward, was hesitant to try the drug for the first time on the Lhotse face itself -- much too risky, given the precarious ground and the thin air -- he compromised with a trial run of the stuff in the Khumbu icefall, just above Everest's base camp. Two Sherpas (Sherpas whose names, alas, seem to have been lost to history) volunteered to try Benzedrine in a kind of ad hoc mountaintop drug trial, reporting on the effects of the stimulant as they carried tents, oxygen equipment, climbing gear, and other cargo from Camps I to II to III.

Had the stimulants actually been stimulating, the experiment might have made an excellent premise for an Everest-set Zack Snyder movie, or at least given new meaning to the phrase "race to the top" ... but the amphetamines, at high altitude, didn't provide the effects the mountaineers had been hoping for. There was no speed. There was no focus. In fact, the drugs seemed to have the opposite effects on their testers. Later, in his memoir of the Everest summiting, the Hunt expeditioner Wilfrid Noyce would explain these "most unexpected results":

One man said that it was wonderful stuff, it had cured his cough. Another said that it made him sleep excellently. Fortunately, they never had to be used.

But excellent sleep, of couse, was not the goal. And though the Sherpas might have had something else to say about the drugs "never having to be used," the doping test was soon abandoned -- a brief experiment relegated to two adventurers whose names have been lost to history.

Megan Garber is a staff writer at The Atlantic.



技术
登顶珠穆朗玛峰的团队给两名夏尔巴人服用了安非他命
渴望成为第一个登顶的人，这些勇敢的冒险家短暂地求助于......。阿德拉（Adderall）。

梅根-加伯报道
2013年5月16日
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埃德蒙-希拉里和夏尔巴人丹增-诺尔盖（Wikimedia Commons）。
近60年前--1953年5月29日--埃德蒙-希拉里和他的尼泊尔登山者丹增-诺尔盖，成为我们所知的第一个登上珠穆朗玛峰的人类。

他们的成就不仅是体力上的壮举，而且是程序上的壮举。攀登珠穆朗玛峰，就像现在一样，是一个设计问题：哪条路可以带领人类安全到达山顶？希拉里和诺尔盖最终不是靠自己的力量登上了这座被风吹动、被雪覆盖的山峰，而是在一个以队长名字命名的400人团队的支持和策划下登顶。约翰-亨特。亨特的珠峰探险队不仅包括一小批西方登山者，还包括362名搬运工和20名夏尔巴人向导，其中一人是诺尔盖--他们所有人都带着大约10,000磅的设备、食物和其他行李在搏斗。


亨特在为他的探险活动制定的战略中并非没有指导。前一年，即1952年，由Edouard Wyss-Dunant领导的一队瑞士登山家曾接近登顶珠穆朗玛峰，创造了新的登山高度记录，并确定了一条新的登山路线。亨特利用他们的经验信息，既巩固了他们的成功，又避免了他们遇到的陷阱。他绘制了一条新的路线--这就是后来的路线--通往山顶的路线，这条路线需要攀登陡峭的冰面，也就是所谓的Lhotse Face。

Everest_adventure.jpg
这条路线还需要一些东西：试图穿越它的人类要有很高的速度。洛泰山的坡度是阶梯状的，这意味着它将为登山者提供机会，在通往山顶的路上建立中间营地，这反过来又意味着更容易获得补给，并缩短休息时间的攀登。这种基础设施将是亨特团队成功的关键。队伍在岩壁底部建立了第五营地，在岩壁上建立了第六和第七营地，在岩壁上建立了第八营地。


唯一悬而未决的问题是，登山者如何以及是否能够在营地之间旅行。最重要的是，他们需要快速行动。

这里是事情变得有点疯狂的地方。

据《卫报》报道，为了获得他们所需要的速度，亨特探险队简短地试验了一种久经考验的，尽管有点人工化的方法，以加快脚步并专注于手头的任务：安非他命。是的，精神刺激药物，今天主要是以Adderall这样的品牌名称而闻名。虽然团队的医务人员迈克尔-沃德(Michael Ward)对首次在洛托斯山面尝试这种药物犹豫不决--考虑到危险的地面和稀薄的空气，他妥协了，在昆布冰谷试运行这种药物，就在珠峰大本营上方。两名夏尔巴人（夏尔巴人的名字似乎已经湮没在历史中）自愿在一种临时的山顶药物试验中试用苯丙胺，在他们将帐篷、氧气设备、登山装备和其他货物从一号营地运到二号营地到三号营地时，报告了兴奋剂的效果。

如果这些兴奋剂真的有刺激作用，这个实验可能会成为一部以珠穆朗玛峰为背景的扎克-斯奈德电影的绝佳前提，或者至少为 "竞速登顶 "这个短语赋予新的含义......但是安非他命在高海拔地区并没有提供登山者所期望的效果。没有速度。也没有注意力。事实上，这些药物似乎对测试者产生了相反的效果。后来，亨特探险家威尔弗里德-诺伊斯在他的珠穆朗玛峰登顶回忆录中解释了这些 "最意想不到的结果"。

一个人说，这是很好的东西，它治愈了他的咳嗽。另一个人说，它使他睡得很好。幸运的是，他们从未被使用过。

但是，良好的睡眠，当然不是目的。尽管夏尔巴人可能对这些药物 "不必使用 "有别的看法，但兴奋剂测试很快就被放弃了 -- 一个短暂的实验被归于两个名字已被历史遗忘的冒险家。

梅根-加伯是《大西洋》杂志的一名工作人员。